Saint E-Book

Adrienne Young

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 414

Beschreibung

Jump into the world of Fable with this exciting new prequel to the New York Times-bestselling novel by Adrienne Young. Join Saint and Isolde, Fable's star-crossed parents, on this adventure with romance, treasure, and heartbreak.As a boy, Elias learned the hard way what happens when you don't heed the old tales.Nine years after his lack of superstition got his father killed, he's grown into a young man of piety, with a deep reverence for the hallowed sea and her fickle favor. As stories of the fisherman's son who has managed to escape the most deadly of storms spreads from port to port, his devotion to the myths and creeds has given him the reputation of the luckiest bastard to sail the Narrows.Now, he's mere days away from getting everything his father ever dreamed for him: a ship of his own, a crew, and a license that names him as one of the first Narrows-born traders. But when a young dredger from the Unnamed Sea with more than one secret crosses his path, Elias' faith will be tested like never before. The greater the pull he feels toward her, the farther he drifts from the things he's spent the last three years working for.He is dangerously close to repeating his mistakes and he's seen first hand how vicious the jealous sea can be. If he's going to survive her retribution, he will have to decide which he wants more, the love of the girl who could change their shifting world, or the sacred beliefs that earned him the name that he's known for—Saint.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

ALSO BY ADRIENNE YOUNG

Sky in the Deep

The Girl the Sea Gave Back

Fable

Namesake

The Last Legacy

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Saint

Print edition ISBN: 9781803362717

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803360065

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: January 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2023 Adrienne Young. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

FOR KRISTIN,

THE VERY FIRST SOUL I EVER TRUSTED WITH MYIMAGINATION. THIS ONE’S FOR YOU.

JOHN B!

PROLOGUE

ISOLDE

There was a blue door with a black lantern on Forsyth Street.

Behind it was a man who could make me disappear.

My hand dragged over the uneven brick wall as I paced up the walk, the heels of my boots a sharp clip in the night. Rain still dripped from the edges of the rooftops, beading down the single-pane windows, and the damask silk of my skirts was heavy with the damp.

North End’s intricate tangle of alleys and streets unfurled into the wet corners of a city that had just seen a storm. It was a labyrinth I didn’t know. Bastian was my home, but I’d never been to North End, not even with my father. A girl like me had no reason to. I was the daughter of a merchant who’d lived every day of her life to please her mother, even if I’d left that version of me back at Azimuth House. But there was no betrayal like the one I carried in my pocket. Now, I was no more than a traitor.

“Blue door. Black lantern,” I whispered to myself again.

My eyes skipped over the buildings and I squinted, trying to make out their shapes and colors in the dark. The helmsman of the Craven was a man I’d seen many times at my mother’s house and on her ships, but he’d kept his distance from me like most of her traders did. No one wanted to touch the flame that burned at the center of my mother’s hands. She protected her precious things.

But the helmsman had been my father’s friend. So, when I’d pulled him behind the gauze curtains that looked out over the candlelit gala and whispered to him that I needed to leave the city, he’d told me how. I could hardly pick out his deep voice over the sound of the music, and now I wondered if I’d heard him right at all.

North End. Look for the blue door with the black lantern on Forsyth Street.

That warm light at my mother’s gala was still alive around me, as if it were clinging to my edges as I slipped through the dark. But I could feel it bleeding from me, like the slow smear of ink in water. Threads of color that stretched until they disappeared. The glint of the gold wallpaper of my mother’s study. My father’s portrait looking down at me. The way the midnight’s song had filled the room until my ears were ringing with it.

In a matter of seconds, that world had come crashing down with only three words spoken from Holland’s lips: a necessary sacrifice.

It had taken me the length of a breath to decide to open the gem case. To walk out that door. And I was never, ever going back.

I wiped the tear from my numb cheek, walking faster as the street curved deeper into the borough. When the glossy blue door of the row house finally appeared, it was easy to spot. The paint looked fresh, almost wet, and the black lantern that hung over the threshold was fitted with not one flame, but two, illuminating the alcove that sat hollow at the top of the steps.

I glanced over my shoulder before I climbed them, knocking softly with a trembling hand. It was the middle of the night, but if what I’d heard about North End was true, it wouldn’t be so unusual to have a visitor at this hour. The work on these streets was done in shadow, out of view of the guilds and the harbor watch and the Trade Council. I suspected that was why the helmsman of the Craven had sent me there.

I raised my fist to knock again before the door’s lock turned and it opened, revealing the face of a girl not much older than me. One long braid was pinned over the crown of her head and the color of her simple frock matched it, made notable only by the bright silver chain of a pocket watch tucked into her belt. Her dark, owlish eyes raked over my gown before they shot to the street behind me.

“I think you knocked on the wrong door.” There was a cutting edge to her voice that hardened the soft curves of her face.

My hands clenched tighter in my skirts, a bead of sweat sliding down my spine, and the hair beginning to unravel from its pins blew across my cheek as another rain-soaked gust of wind swallowed the street.

“I’m looking for Simon,” I said.

The name the helmsman of the Craven had given me seemed to surprise her, but the look on her face quickly turned into curiosity. She studied me another moment, the set of her mouth steady as her gaze tightened on my face. She was looking for something there, I realized, and once she found it, she let the door swing open.

I glanced once more at the empty street before I stepped over the threshold, into the amber light that filled the narrow hallway. The floorboards popped beneath the soles of my boots, the windows of the house rattling in the wind, but the sound buzzing in my chest was a different one. Gemstone.

The hum hovered between the walls in a chorus that reverberated in my bones. It was everywhere, coming from all around me.

There was a moment, a fleeting one, when I wanted to reach for the door before it closed and run from that feeling that had haunted me since the day my mother first realized what I was. But as quickly as the thought came, it was gone again. There was no going back. Not now.

The door’s heavy bolt slid into place and the girl turned to face me. There was a beat of silence that made me think that she, too, was reconsidering whether she should have let me inside.

Her chin lifted. “Follow me.”

The fabric of my thick skirts brushed along the walls of the cramped hallway, making me feel like it was growing narrower by the second. The familiar sounds of garnet and emerald and diamond caught my ear, interlaced with a dozen others, but they didn’t belong here. The tiny, run-down row house wasn’t the home of someone who wore a merchant’s ring from the Gem Guild, which would deem the trade inventory under this roof a legitimate one. North End was famous for its criminals, and they’d made my mother’s life very difficult over the last few years. I could only hope that meant this was the last place she’d come looking for me.

The hall came to an end, and I followed the girl down a winding staircase, catching sight of her face only briefly as she looked back at me. “You’re lucky you didn’t have those jewels and that ridiculous frock ripped off of you in the street.”

The words weren’t laced with a threat or even any kind of reproach. In fact, she sounded as if she was genuinely marveling at the fact that I’d made it there in one piece. And she was probably right. I’d walked all the way from the merchants’ district, keeping to the alleys so I wouldn’t be spotted. My mother would have already noticed I was gone, and that wasn’t entirely unusual. But when she saw what I’d taken with me, she’d have the whole city combing the streets and the harbor.

The girl opened another door and we entered a large, dark cellar lit only by a small fireplace tucked into one corner. The walls were almost entirely hidden by stacks of closed crates that reached to the ceiling, marked with port seals I recognized. They stretched from the Unnamed Sea to the Narrows.

It took me a moment to spot the man sitting at the long wooden table on the other side of the room. Simon, I hoped. He looked up from a stack of parchment, eyes struggling to focus on me. His light brown hair was a wild sweep across his forehead, the buttons of his shirt half undone.

“She’s looking for you.” The girl’s fingers slipped from the door handle as she watched me.

I finally let go of my skirts, wiping my slick palms against the smooth fabric. “You’re Simon?”

“I am.” The man’s voice was measured, as unreadable as his face, but I saw his gaze pause on the pearl-and-sapphire earrings that still hung from my ears.

“My name is—”

“I know who you are,” he interrupted. “The question is, what are you doing here?”

I hadn’t planned to give him my real name, but the fact that he knew my face woke a sinking feeling in the center of my chest. I’d been raised among the likes of the guild, but I’d lived most of my days with my mother’s ship crews. This man was neither. And I was sure I’d never seen him before.

“I was told you can get me out of the city,” I said.

His hands moved from the parchment, folding it on the table before him, and his attention drifted back to the girl in the doorway. It was only a moment before it found me again.

“If you want to leave Bastian, all you have to do is walk down to the harbor and pay for passage.”

“No. I can’t.” I swallowed, thinking of Holland. She saw every manifest. Every inventory list. The harbor master himself answered to her. “I need to . . . disappear.”

Simon finally stood, letting the stool scrape against the uneven floor behind him. The sound made me shift on my feet. When he came around the table to face me, I took an involuntary step backward.

“To where?”

“Ceros,” I answered, hands twisting into the fabric of my skirts again.

It would take no time at all for Holland to find me in Nimsmire or Sagsay Holm. There wasn’t a single port in the Unnamed Sea she didn’t have eyes on. And if I was going to cut her the only place she could feel, I had to get to the Narrows.

“Who sent you here?” he asked.

“The helmsman of the Craven.”

Simon seemed to consider that a moment. He paced the floor, arms crossed over his chest, but beside me, the girl looked wary. They weren’t fools. If they knew who I was then they knew who I was running from, and no one in their right mind would go against my mother. But this man and Holland were probably already on opposite sides of a line.

“Won’t take her long to look through the passenger lists,” he thought aloud, and I was grateful he didn’t call Holland by name. “And there’s only one way to leave Bastian—the sea.”

“A crew, then,” I said.

“Crew?” One of his eyebrows lifted. “You want to crew on a ship headed to the Narrows?”

“If you know who I am, then you know I’m a dredger.”

He stopped his pacing then, staring at me. Holland’s dredger daughter was a source of entertainment for the guilds. Freediving the coral reefs that snaked through the Unnamed Sea to excavate gemstone wasn’t exactly a refined trade. But it wasn’t just the dredging my mother used me for, and that was the reason her empire had stretched the entire coast of the Unnamed Sea. In a way, I’d raised and fed the dragon that had all but devoured me.

My father hadn’t been so lucky. He’d had the sense to keep my gift as a gem sage a family matter. It was only in the last few years that it had become all but impossible to do. And his worry for me had eventually become his end.

“Put me on a crew. As long as they’re going to Ceros, I don’t care which one.”

I had no intention of diving for anyone ever again. Not unless it was my own pockets I was filling with coin. But I needed a ship. One my mother wouldn’t look twice at.

Simon’s head tilted to one side, considering it. “Not the worst idea.” He pulled a fresh sheet of parchment from the stack on the table. “There’s a ship in the harbor that’s scheduled to leave at dawn. It’s called the Luna.”

I exhaled, so heavy with relief that I felt as if I might fall through the floor.

He kept his back to me and took his time, dipping the quill into the inkpot between lines of words and sanding the ink. When he was finished, he folded the parchment carefully and sealed it with a deep violet wax the color of opaque amethyst.

“You’re sure?” The girl’s quiet voice was heavy as she eyed Simon. I’d almost forgotten she was standing there.

He answered with only a brief glance in her direction before he gestured to me.

“Those should do it.”

It took a moment for me to realize he was talking about the earrings he’d been inspecting when I walked through the door. I hesitated before I reached up, unclasping each one and dropping them into his hand. They were worth over a hundred coppers each, but I’d expected to pay more.

He tucked them into the pocket of his vest, jerking his chin toward the door, where the young woman was still patiently waiting.

“Get her something to wear, Eden.” He handed her the parchment. “And have the seamstress cut up that frock. The silk should fetch something.”

She vanished without another word, leaving us alone in the dark cellar.

Simon leaned into the edge of the table, watching me as her steps faded up the staircase. It was only then I could feel just how far I was from the protective reach and scrutinizing gaze of my mother. And instead of that knowledge bringing me fear, there was only fury burning inside of me.

“Looks like fate is smiling on me tonight,” he said, almost to himself.

My hand slipped into my pocket, finding the small purse that held the midnight stone. It was the only thing that had the power to pierce Holland’s iron skin. The only thing I’d ever seen put a flash of terror in her eyes, bright behind that look of hunger.

Simon’s attention seemed to narrow on me the moment I thought it. “What exactly is it you’re you running from, Isolde?”

I didn’t like hearing my name on a stranger’s tongue, but there was more than one answer to that question. My mother. Her empire. Her blood that ran through my veins. It wasn’t the first time I’d wanted to escape, but when I heard those words leave her mouth, the cold had wrapped around my heart and squeezed until I couldn’t breathe.

A necessary sacrifice.

It had been almost a year since my father died on Yuri’s Constellation, the system of reefs I’d grown up diving. The helmsman who’d run the dive for my mother arrived at the harbor with the news. A terrible accident, he’d called it. A sudden turn of tide in an unexpected storm.

It wasn’t until the night of the gala, almost a year later, as I stood in my mother’s study listening to her hushed words entangled with the voice of the Unnamed Sea’s Gem Guild master, that I understood. She’d called my father a necessary sacrifice.

The pieces clicked together one at a time until the picture formed in my mind. It took only minutes to find the ship logs. To find no mention of the storm that had swallowed my father and my heart in a single moment.

He’d wanted to leave Bastian with me. To take me away from my mother’s growing shadows. I would have followed him anywhere, but Holland had made sure I had no one to follow. No one but her.

My hand squeezed the purse of gemstone in my pocket so hard that my knuckles ached. I wasn’t just going to set fire to everything she’d built. I was going to throw her into the flames too.

Simon took a step toward me. “I said, what are you running from?”

My eyes lifted to meet his, the midnight burning like a hot ember in the center of my palm. “A monster.”

ONE

SAINT

My father told me once that the only fools who sailed the Narrows were the dead and the dying. Sometimes, I think I’m both.

I leaned into the railing of the Riven with both hands, watching the lanterns in the harbor flicker to life one by one in the distance. Water dripped from the sails overhead and the meager crew on the deck was still white-faced from the swells we’d carved down only an hour before we spotted land.

Behind them, Clove stood at the helm, the spokes light in his fingers as it spun. His stained shirt was rolled up to his elbows, and most of his blond hair was now unraveled from its knot, blowing across his face as we turned into the wind.

We’d chosen Dern for two reasons. The first was because there was little cause for anyone to come here, other than the traders from the Unnamed Sea who bought grain from the crofters for less than it cost to grow it. The second was because Rosamund was the only shipwright willing to risk taking the coin off two fishermen’s sons from Cragsmouth who had no legitimate way to explain where they got it.

There was an explanation, of course. Just not one I was willing to give.

The fading daylight painted the sails over our heads a brilliant amber and the intricately stitched canvas glistened with droplets of rain. They were more patchwork than anything these days, having been repaired by the sailmaker so many times that he’d flat-out refused to take a needle to them again.

He wasn’t the only one who thought I was mad, tempting the sea demons by sailing the rickety old ship into deep waters. But I’d come out the other side of enough black, tangled clouds to stop asking whether a storm would kill me. The sea had had her chance enough times. She’d never taken it.

I unfolded my hand, eyeing the fresh cut across my palm beside a stack of healed scars. It was still raw and red from the last port we’d left, stinging as the skin stretched.

“Take us in,” I murmured to Clove, ducking into the narrow passage behind him.

His voice called out the orders to our sorry excuse for a crew as I pushed into the sorry excuse for a helmsman’s quarters. The cramped room smelled like mold and years-old mullein smoke seeping from the damp wood, but it had been my home for the last two and a half years and it had stayed afloat, which was more than most bastards got.

I hadn’t had oil for the lantern in weeks—another luxury we couldn’t afford—so when the sun went down it was damn near impossible to see anything. I felt my way along the bulkhead to the chest against the wall and lifted the lid. The stiff hinges creaked as the trunk opened and I reached inside. I didn’t bother hiding copper on this ship because there wasn’t anyone stupid enough to steal from me. That was where the stories they told about us had served us well.

My reflection appeared on the round, cracked mirror beside the window as I stood. Blue eyes stared back at me, set beneath thick, dark brows. The angles of my face were deeper than usual, and my jaw was shadowed with scruff. But there wasn’t a single coin in our coffers that hadn’t already been spent. The lowest on the list was a full belly or a clean shave or lanterns we could actually light. I wouldn’t have any of those things until well after Rosamund was paid.

I took the long, cylindrical map case from the wall and pulled the strap over my head so that the case rested against my back. Then I raked one hand through my almost-black hair, tucking it behind one ear and pulling up the collar of my jacket. The purse was heavy in my palm as I stowed it in my pocket, and the ship creaked perilously around me as it began to slow. I wasn’t sure how many more voyages across the Narrows the Riven could take, but I wouldn’t have to find out either.

I caught my own gaze in the mirror for a moment more, brushing off the shoulders of my jacket. I didn’t look anything like the Saltbloods who sailed their fancy ships from the Unnamed Sea and plucked what little the Narrows had from our starving hands. Even so, in a month’s time, we’d be hocking the Riven to whoever wanted the scrap iron and salvageable wood. Then we’d be sailing from Dern under a real trader’s crest.

Clove was already waiting beside the ladder when I came back out onto the deck. He leaned into the railing, eyeing Julian as he tied off the lines of the foremast with a hard set to his mouth. The young deckhand’s fingers faltered under Clove’s gaze, and he pulled at its length, starting again. There was no impressing the Riven’s navigator, and with a helmsman who steered them into storms that were the stuff of nightmares, the crew we picked up at each port never lasted long. A few times, they’d disappeared without even waiting to collect the coin they were owed.

It was just as well. There was no shortage of bastards in the Narrows who thought they were willing to die for copper. I usually got at least a few crossings out of them before they realized they weren’t.

“Ready?” Clove pulled on his cap as the deckhand finished, swinging one leg over the railing.

“Ready.”

I followed him down to the dock, where the harbor master was already waiting. Gerik studied the ship with a scrutinizing gaze, his lip curled under his pointed nose. The Riven was nothing much to look at, but I’d stopped being ashamed of her a long time ago.

“You know, every time you leave, I’m sure it’s the last time I’ll see this ship,” Gerik muttered, scratching at a page in his log with a feathered quill. His gaze lifted to the crate of rye being lowered from the railing behind us.

“Messages?” I asked, eyeing the opening of his jacket, where a stack of folded parchment was tucked against his chest.

“No,” he answered.

I clenched my teeth, the weight on my chest pressing just a little heavier. Every time we made port, I was sure the summons to the Trade Council would be waiting.

“I guess that means you still don’t have that license you keep promising?”

“I don’t.”

Gerik’s eyes squinted. “Then why are you unloading rye on my dock?”

I reached into my vest for the smaller purse of coin I’d known I would need. Now that the Narrows had its own legitimate Trade Council, every helmsman who sailed its waters was vying for a license to compete with the Saltbloods. Us included. But it took copper to get a license—a lot of it—and the only way to get that much coin was to trade without a license first and hope that everyone kept their mouths shut.

Gerik could be paid to look the other way, but he could also be paid to snitch. So far, we’d been lucky.

“It’s coming,” I grunted, handing the purse over.

“Says you and every other fool with a ship.” He took it, immediately turning on his heel. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

“Bastard,” Clove muttered.

He hated Gerik even more than I did. He hated most people, in fact. We’d grown up on the wide-bellied fishing boats in Cragsmouth and we’d each pulled the other from churning waters more times than I could count, but that wasn’t the reason he was the only soul in the Narrows I trusted. Anyone could throw a drowning man a line. Finding someone who would catch hold of you before you fell overboard in the first place was harder, if not impossible.

I pulled the watch from my pocket, tilting it toward the lantern light. “Need to make this quick.”

Clove scanned the docks around us as I started toward the stairs, and a moment later, his footsteps sounded behind me. Dern was no more than a cluster of stone buildings along the rocky shore. It was an outpost of sorts that had slowly become a port when the ships from the Unnamed Sea started showing up here for grain, but the village hadn’t caught much attention from the new Trade Council in Ceros. Not yet anyway.

I climbed the steps and took the winding path that led up the hill, away from the busy main thoroughfare. Rosamund didn’t like being in the mix of things, but the longer our arrangement dragged on, the more likely it was that someone would get wind of what I was up to. It would come out eventually. But controlling when was the key.

The shore grew steep as we reached the little cove, where a few piers reached out over the water. One of them had never been repaired after the storm that took its roof a few years ago, but the other two were still standing, and Rosamund’s seal adorned both.

I rapped on the door with my fist twice, and the lock turned a moment later. Ros’s apprentice, Nash, didn’t look happy to see us. He never did.

His eyes dragged over me from head to toe. “Back already?”

I leaned into the doorframe. “She here?”

Nash’s lips pursed as he inspected my shirt, and I ignored him. Not all of us had the steady place of an apprenticeship to keep our clothes mended and our hair trimmed. Not all of us wanted one either. I’d sooner find my death in the deep than live under a guild’s crooked thumb.

Nash pushed the door open, letting us in, and he locked it behind us. Inside, lantern light washed over the warm, golden-hued hull of a ship.

The Aster.

She was a schooner with two masts and a hull that would hold more than enough cargo for us to get our trade off the ground. Most important, she was ours. Or she would be once I handed this purse of coin over.

The last time we’d seen her, the masts hadn’t been standing. Now they reached up into the rafters that arched over our heads, where a few silver-feathered pigeons were perched in crumbling straw nests. The ship was set onto braces that stretched out over the open black water below. In a few weeks, she would be lowered into the sea for the first time and we’d be raising the sails.

I met Clove’s eyes. There was the faint shadow of a smirk on his lips. He was thinking the same thing. Somehow, we’d pulled this thing off. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure how.

“Thought I heard coin jingling,” Rosamund’s rasping voice called out from the deck above. She peered down at us over the railing of the starboard side before climbing down to the platform.

Nash crossed his arms over his chest, still sneering. “You sure you can handle a ship like this one? I’d hate to see it sail away just to hear it’s sunk a week later.”

“We do the building, not the sailing, Nash,” Rosamund said, jumping down from the ladder with a grunt. “What do you care, as long as you get paid?”

She pulled the straps of her heavy tool belt from her shoulders and loosened the buckle at her waist. When she was free of it, she reached up, kneading the tight muscles at the back of her neck. Rosamund wasn’t a slight woman, but the bulky shipwright’s gear made her look it.

“All right. Get on with it.” She wasn’t a gentle woman either.

I reached into my jacket and pulled the purse free, setting it into her open hand. She felt its weight before she passed it to Nash, and he found a seat at the small table against the wall to begin counting right away.

“How many days?” I asked, watching him carefully as he opened the purse.

Rosamund turned the merchant’s ring on her finger, thinking. The silver was dinged and bent up from the work she did, but the stone at its center marked her as an approved merchant by the Shipwrights Guild. If Nash was lucky, one day he’d wear one too.

“I’d say we’ll have her sea ready by the next full moon, give or take a few days.”

Clove took a step toward the edge of the platform and reached up, running a hand over the smooth wood planks that stretched to the bow. There was a rare tenderness in the touch. He’d waited a long time for this. We both had.

“But I gotta say,” Ros sighed, “those fools up at the tavern are gettin’ more curious by the day.”

Clove’s gaze slid to meet mine. That was a problem. We weren’t the only ones trying to establish a Narrows-born trading operation, and there was no shortage of helmsmen who’d see this ship burn before they let us get ahead of them in that line. We’d managed to keep the Aster a secret while it was being built, but if people in Dern found out Rosamund was building a ship for us, that would catch attention. And not just from the helmsmen of the Narrows who stopped here. The Saltbloods didn’t want to lose their hold on trade, and one more ship sailing wouldn’t do them any favors. We didn’t need anyone sniffing around and finding out just how close we were.

Rosamund set her hands on her hips impatiently. “How’re we lookin’, Nash?”

“So far so good,” he grunted, taking his time with each stack of coin.

When I realized he was only halfway through the purse, I pulled the watch from my pocket to check the time again. It was nearly half past the hour, and I knew what happened when I was late. My next appointment wouldn’t wait for me, no matter how long we’d been doing business.

“Go.” Clove jerked a chin toward the door. “I’ll finish up here and meet you at the tavern for the count.”

I nodded, snapping the watch closed and dropping it back into my jacket. I pulled my cap on and started toward the door, but I looked back once more before I pushed out into the rain.

The Aster glowed in the lantern light, the gleaming wood as smooth as the morning sea. She wasn’t just a ship. She was an idea. She was the thing I’d risked my neck for a hundred times over the last two years and my chance at a trade license, along with a crest of my own. But the Aster wasn’t just going to change things for me and Clove. She was going to change things for the Narrows.

TWO

SAINT

Three chimneys rose from the mist over the only tavern in Dern, smoke billowing from their narrow, blackened mouths.

In the two years I’d been stopping in the village, I’d never seen the tavern empty. There was no merchant’s house here, even though there was a growing trade, and that meant the tavern was the place of business for anyone stopping through, including me.

The roar of voices came tumbling out onto the street as I opened the doors, and the humid warmth of the fire in the stone fireplace at the back hit me like a wall. I was never on dry land long enough to rid my bones of the chill or fully dry the damp from my clothes, but the smell of burning wood reminded me of the days before I’d given my life to the sea.

The door closed behind me and I instinctively rolled my shoulders. I didn’t like being closed in by four walls and I didn’t like the feeling of solid earth beneath my feet. I preferred the openness of the water, where you could at least see what was coming for you on the horizon.

The barkeeper gave me a nod in greeting when he spotted me, immediately turning toward the wall of bottles behind him and reaching for the one that quite literally had my name on it. Barkeepers made a nice side profit on pouring watered-down rye for patrons once they were a few drinks in, pocketing the excess coin. The first time I’d caught him filling my glass with it, I’d drawn my knife from my belt so quickly that he didn’t even have time to stopper it.

I could see that look—the one that flashed in the eyes of the people who’d heard the stories about the helmsman of the Riven. In those tales, I’d made a pact with sea demons to spare my ship from storms and offered my own crew as sacrifices to the sea. I was mad. Reckless. Just asking to meet my death out on the water.

The barkeeper hadn’t tried cutting my rye again, and I doubted he would since I kept him stocked with Sowan’s best bottle. I couldn’t blame him for trying, but Clove and I weren’t just two kids from a fishing village who’d washed up in the harbor. And I counted on him to make sure I didn’t look cheap in front of my guest.

I leaned on the counter with both hands, waiting as he pulled the bottle from its place on the wall. He set it down, followed by two small green glasses.

“Your luck never ceases to amaze me, Saint.” He grunted. “Just missed a hell of a storm.”

I smirked to myself. We hadn’t missed it. And luck had nothing to do with it. “Our room ready?”

He gave me a nod and I lifted the map case from my shoulder, handing it to him. One of the kitchen maids was already climbing the stairs with it when I picked up the bottle and the glasses, heading for the row of wooden booths that lined the wall.

The toe of a shined leather boot stuck out from under one of the tables and when I rounded the high back of the seat, Henrik Roth didn’t even bother looking up from his ledger.

His mouth moved silently around the numbers he was writing along the right-hand column of the open page as I slid into the seat across from him. His pocket watch was open on the table, the second hand quietly ticking around the face. I waited for him to finish before I set the two glasses between us.

Henrik dropped the quill, looking up. He was only four or five years older than me, but something about the look in his eyes always made me forget that. His light brown hair had the slightest tinge of red and it was somehow always freshly cut and expertly combed, as if whatever ship he came in on had a barber on board. His tailored jacket and spotless white shirt made him stand out among the grimy traders that filled the tavern, but I’d always gotten the impression that he liked it that way. He was the most smartly dressed criminal I’d ever met.

“Could smell you as soon as you came through the door.” He sat back, giving me a wry grin. “You’re more fish guts than human these days.”

I unstopped the bottle, pouring his rye before I poured my own. “You’re probably right about that.” I set it down and picked up my glass.

Henrik followed, lifting his to meet mine at the center of the table, and they clinked before we shot them back in one swallow. The taste burned in the back of my throat, warming my belly as Henrik took it upon himself to pour the second round.

“When are you going to tell me where you get this stuff?” He lifted one eyebrow.

I swirled the rye in my glass. The bottles Clove and I sold illegally at each port had no maker’s mark, and that was intentional. If we were caught selling it, I didn’t want it falling back on the crofter who made it. But I also didn’t want anyone knowing where it came from because when we finally had our license, we’d be the only ones trading the stuff.

“I’ll tell you where the rye comes from if you tell me how you get those gem fakes to weigh out,” I said.

Henrik smiled at that, his brown eyes sparkling. The Roths had built their business on gem fakes that were more than convincing, but the real mystery was how they’d been able to get their stones to pass the scales. According to the accounts I’d heard in the Narrows taverns, it had been more than thirty years since the Roths’ fakes had first started appearing in the merchant’s houses, and no one had been able to crack it. Not even the few gem sages who were left.

Between our rye and Henrik’s stones, we’d started a risky but mutually beneficial enterprise in the Narrows. Almost two years in, Clove and I had finally been able to fund the build of the Aster and our petition for a license in one sweep.

Henrik reached into his vest, producing a small blue velvet pouch and setting it down in front of me. I finished my glass before opening it and pouring the faceted crimson pieces into my palm. Their faces caught the lantern light, sparkling, and the sight made me swallow hard. It was the largest haul we’d ever traded for him, and if I played it right, it could be the last. Now that the Aster and our trade license was paid for, the coin we cut from this deal would go to launch our first official route through the Narrows. It was the kind of coin that spilled blood. Ours, if we weren’t careful.

“Red beryl, ranging from about a quarter to a third of a carat each. The cuts are clean and the color is some of the best I’ve done. These’ll pass anyone’s inspection as long as you steer clear of a gem sage.”

“Lucky for you those aren’t so easy to find these days,” I said, holding one of the stones up to the light.

The ratio of real to fake was at least one to three, but I wouldn’t be able tell them apart if my life depended on it. Even the gem merchants’ most sophisticated gem lamps rarely detected them.

“I’m definitely not complaining.”

I poured the stones back into the pouch, cinching it closed and tucking it into my jacket before I pulled my final purse of coin free. Henrik didn’t even bother counting it. We’d traded enough times for him to know I was good for it, and I knew him well enough now to understand that if I crossed the Roths, I’d pay with my life.

“Happy to be rid of them. Most of the gem sages in Bastian are gone. Sagsay Holm too.”

“Where are they headed?”

Henrik shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care. But my job is getting a lot easier without them.”

There was a time when gem sages had been in high demand in both Bastian and Ceros for their unparalleled skills with the gems. But when they started out-earning the merchants who relied upon them, there were bounties put out and no shortage of people who were willing to collect that coin. People like the Roths, whose business relied on the production and trade of fakes, had benefited.

“I’ve heard there are merchants in the Narrows paying top dollar to have a gem sage smuggled in. I’d be careful,” he said.

That didn’t surprise me. Now that the Narrows had a Trade Council, there wasn’t a single guild member who wasn’t trying to climb up in the world to try their hand at beating out the merchants of the Unnamed Sea. If they had to buy gem sages to do it, they would.

“Thanks for the tip.”

Henrik leaned on the table with both elbows. “You lose business, I lose business.”

He met my eyes, making sure I understood that it wasn’t charity. It was a warning. If he didn’t bring in the coin he was supposed to, his father, Felix Roth, would deal with him. That was what made getting mixed up with the Roths so dangerous. Everyone had something to lose.

Henrik was the only one involved in this arrangement who knew where the gems were going. I sold them in Sowan to a merchant named Lander who collected a percentage for bleeding them into the gem trade in Bastian, but he had no idea where they came from or how they’d gotten into the Narrows in the first place. I was just the first link in the chain.

“Anything else I should know?” I asked.

“Nothing of consequence.”

He turned his empty glass on the table, the look in his eyes sharpening. The ease that had been in his demeanor, I realized, was suddenly gone. “Anything I should know?”

“No.”

“That’s funny. I could have sworn I heard talk of a shipwright here in Dern working on a new schooner for an unknown Narrows-born helmsman.”

I met his eyes, taking every care not to react. He was onto me. But I couldn’t risk giving him any information he didn’t already have. “Something you want to ask me, Henrik?”

“You know the stories they tell about you, don’t you?” His head tilted to one side. “About a kid from nowhere who sails into storms that would make a seasoned trader piss his trousers. That you’re pious. Superstitious. A believer in the old tales. That a blood pact with sea demons is the only reason you’re still breathing.”

My fist tightened under the table, where the cut of my own blade striped my palm.

I knew the stories. They were what had given me the name I was known by outside of Cragsmouth—Saint. No one knew Elias, the boy born in a backwater fishing village who’d made a mistake that cost him everything.

“When I first heard about you, I thought to myself, that’s one smart bastard, letting the rumors do the work for him while he writes his own story. It’s one of the reasons I agreed to work with you. But this little misstep has had me wondering if I made a mistake.”

“You didn’t.”

“Good. Because I don’t make mistakes. If you want to trade with a legit license and sail under your own crest on a new ship, that’s your business. But as soon as people get wind of it, someone is going make sure you never make it to the next port. And my coin will be at the sea bottom with you.”

That was exactly the reason we’d been treading lightly.

“No one will get wind of it,” I said.

“You sure about that?”

Warm blood pooled in my hand where I’d torn open the cut in my palm.

“Someone in this village has a loose tongue.” Henrik leaned in closer. “Might be time for you to cut it out.”

My teeth clenched tightly as I nodded. If someone was talking, we had less time than I thought to get that license and raise our crest over the Aster. Only then would we have the protection of the Trade Council to keep us from getting a knife in the back.

Henrik picked up his pocket watch and closed his ledger, tucking both inside of his jacket. “See you in three weeks.”

He stood and I stared into the back of the booth, waiting until the door of the tavern opened and closed before I poured myself one more glass of rye. I’d known from the beginning that we were playing with fire by working with the Roths, but the risk had paid off. Even if I could feel the careful framework we’d built rattling around me, threatening to come crashing down.

I lifted the glass and tipped my head back, letting the rye burn in my chest. There were a hundred different ways this could still go wrong and no shortage of blades I could find at my throat. By the time we got back out onto the water, I needed to be sure I was rid of at least one of them.

THREE

ISOLDE

Being the only Saltblood on a ship had its advantages until someone left a dead rat in your hammock.

I stood in the dim light of the crew’s cabin, staring down into the quilted fabric. It reeked of mildew and rye, but it was the most honest bed I’d ever slept in. Everything I’d had in Bastian was bought with someone else’s blood.

I didn’t miss the warm fire of my rooms, the fine quilts, or the plush rugs that covered the marble floor at Azimuth House. The only thing I missed was someone who wasn’t there anymore.

I fished the poor, lifeless creature out of my hammock by the tail, holding it away from me. The bloodstain it left behind would be of little consequence, but the message was another matter. It was an old custom and I’d seen it on my mother’s ships many times.

Dredgers weren’t the lowest rung of a crew, but they drew the most suspicion. Accusations of pocketing gems on a dive or selling cache locations to other traders were something that every dredger had to deal with, but they were disadvantages I’d never really suffered because my mother employed every member of the crews I’d been on. Making a move against me meant making a move against the great gem merchant Holland, and that was a risk no one was willing to take.

But I wasn’t on the Unnamed Sea anymore. As soon as I’d handed my earrings and my frock over, Simon had taken me down to the docks, where the Luna was waiting. I’d known as soon as I met its helmsman that it wouldn’t be as easy as simply hitching a ride to the Narrows. But a dead rodent dangling from my fingertips was nothing to the mess I’d left behind in Bastian.

I climbed the steps of the passageway back to the deck and the sunlight hit my face, the wind clearing away the stagnant stench that hovered below. The crew was at work and the navigator, Burke, was at the helm, his eyes following my path as I crossed to the portside railing. We’d been at sea for almost a week and I hadn’t earned anyone’s favor. I wouldn’t unless I started putting coin in the helmsman’s purse with a haul of dredged gemstones.

I tossed the rat into the water, turning on my heel to scan the masts above until I spotted Yasmin, the ships’ lead bosun. Her long blond hair was tied in a series of knots between her shoulder blades, and she was holding back a smile breaking on her lips. If I had to guess, I would say the rat had been her doing or maybe that of Darin, one of the deckhands who warmed her bed. They had no unwavering loyalty to the Luna. In fact, I was certain they were running their own side trades on the ship. The rat had been more about making sure I knew where I stood. Here, I wasn’t untouchable the way I’d been in Bastian, and I liked that. I just hoped it didn’t get me killed.

“What was that, dredger?” Burke eyed me over the helm.